Tonight I retire to bed much more at ease than last night. The storm abated and the next high tide, I am told, arrived not so high and stayed within its normal bounds; the waves did not not venture above the roller-coaster railway line and into the hole that was a road until  just an hour after the Dawlish sea wall was breached. At present he engineers are arranging for special quick-setting concrete to cap the most vulnerable areas before the storms return.

But perhaps you know this already because you may have heard it on the news; I have it from my man on the spot, quite literally.